Karen DeCrow Quotes

"If supporters of equality for women want to vote for the best candidate, they must look to a person regardless of gender and must disregard the gender of political opponents."

"Most experiences are either sensual or intellectual. Chamber music, played by a small group so the listener can follow what each player is doing, is both."

"I enjoy practicing law too much to even contemplate retiring, but I often think about engaging in serious study of the history of art, of the intricacies of classical music. I could write a fugue, or perhaps learn to play the cello."

"Just as the Supreme Court has said that women have the right to choose whether or not to be parents, men should also have that right."

"Our culture is intent on taking the lines out of people's faces - surgically, with costly creams, and with fear and trembling - when, in fact, the opposite should be the case. As artists know, if there is anything behind a face, that face improves with age."

"One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name."

"Despite the strength of the feminist movement in the 1970s and beyond, a fable has persisted that educated women are rejected as marriage partners."

"As I grow older, I become more and more of a Marxist - Groucho, that is. When you have lived two-thirds of your life, you know the value of a good joke."

"In the battle between the sexes, men and women will go practically to the end of the earth in illogical, irrational ways to give each other pain."

"We should cease thinking about men as the enemy of children and women."

"I joined NOW on an issue of pay."

"When I was in school, there was no such thing as girls' athletics."

"No matter what is happening in life or in the world - war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones - if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy."

"Father's Day each year makes me grateful for what my father did for me. This has little to do with our relationship, and much to do with what he taught me."

"In the 1950s in the United States, few music lovers were listening to chamber music. Daddy played Bach and Haydn on our phonograph for me. Not only did I become familiar with the form; he discussed the concerti. My own head start. My own Head Start."

"Daddy was hilarious. He could take the most mundane event and tell it so that we all on the floor laughing. He trained me in the joys of humor."

"Most of us believe that women can do what men do. The challenge is to convince employers, legislators, mothers, that men can do what women do."

"Asked to give advice to a 13-year-old girl about how to lead her life, I say find something you love to do. The goal shouldn't be accumulating money. It might be making changes in the world, or in your country."

"In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts."

"After 'Roe v. Wade' - when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 - I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not."

"George McGovern - and I campaigned very hard for his election - was not, in the summer of 1971, a strong feminist ally. But he did come around."

"During the 19th-century struggle for women's rights in America, many saw a competition between rights for black people and those for women."

"Knowing constitutional law helps one at the opera. The trial in 'Billy Budd,' as example, invokes the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. Constitution."

"I was running for mayor of Syracuse - the first woman to run for mayor in our city, or in New York, and one of the first in the United States. I was known for my strong conservation plank. In 1969, the term 'conservation' was hardly on the tip of every citizen's tongue."

"Most of the well-known American feminists of the 19th century did not come out against the institution of marriage."

"Is it a recent occurrence that women have tried to control when and if they reproduced? Absolutely not. By 2000 B.C., there was worldwide use of herbal potions to prevent pregnancy. Condoms were made from animal bladders."

"Opponents of legal birth control, including abortion, have tried for decades to play the race card, saying that legal abortion is racist. What they ignore is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966."

"In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great."

"In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play."

"Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach."